Soap star adopts new lease of life

Page Tools

Ian Smith reveals the pain of finding out he
was adopted.Photo: Courtesy ABC TV

AUSTRALIAN STORY (8pm, ABC)

There are seasons for soap-opera's favourites. There are those
cliffhanger times of the year when, feeling the full cyclonic blast
of a story editor's centrifugal force, they cling on for dear life
and further television affection by the sheer polish of their
nails.

But who could have imagined that dear old Harold Bishop was
going through so much darker drama away from the set of
Neighbours, playing the off-screen role of his life as actor
Ian Smith? Nothing sudsy in that script. Nothing cliched or
predictable, or even imaginable to those who watch him play a
fuddy-duddy character every night to become their closest TV
friend.

In The Born Identity, tonight's emotional and compelling edition
of Australian Story, the longest serving member of
Australia's most successful series talks of that devastating period
- some 11 or so years ago - when he learnt he was adopted, and of
the effects and aftermath of that profound revelation.

Smith, now 65, recalls the shock of hearing his mother's story
for the first time. Connie Smith, in her 80s, facing an operation
and fearing she was about to die, decided he needed the truth. It
didn't come easily and, says the actor, eventually it was blurted
out: "Ian, you were adopted."

Her words proved traumatic. He felt chilled. "I did sort of pass
out . . . standing up and still remaining standing," he says. "I
felt betrayed. I felt that the first 54 years of my life had been a
total lie and I hated everyone who was part of that lie . . . I
went into a terrible, terrible mental breakdown."

The journey that has followed for Smith does not fit any soapie
patterns. There was depression. There was the need to find someone
to blame, an anger with his mother, Connie, 24 hours before she
died, that was never resolved. And regrets about that now. "I did
it because I was messed up in the head," Smith says.

Smith's clearly supportive wife, Gail, helped the actor take the
next big step. That was to be the eventual reunion with his birth
mother, Peg Kline. Smith wrote what must have been the hardest
letter of his life, introducing himself and making contact. She
called and talked to Gail on the afternoon the letter arrived.
Ironically, she had never seen Neighbours.

"It amazed me that this character seemed to be so loved, so much
looked-up to," she now says.

It has been a bittersweet experience for Smith and his families.
No easy answers; like good drama, just lessons in life.